Areté
by Saucery
Summary: The Pendragons are one of the most influential families in the European mafia. Arthur, heir to the Pendragon clan and vicious misanthrope, leads a life fraught with blood, sex and violence - until he meets Merlin, the only man more powerful than he is.


**BORGATA**

**- Part I -**

**_Areté_**

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><p>Morrissey hung by his arms, his mouth smashed into a gelatinous pulp. Blood coagulated along his jaw and dripped onto the floor in a steady, staccato rhythm. Drip, drip, drip. Like a fucking metronome. It reminded Arthur of sitting in front of Father's grand piano at the age of six, knuckles stinging from the slap of a ruler, his thin-lipped teacher snarling about posture and discipline and practice, practice, practice.<p>

Well, he'd practiced, all right. And now, he was really _good_ at this. At making music, at playing the right notes - albeit with living bodies as instruments.

Arthur slid his baton under Morrissey's chin. The baton's rounded tip was slick with clotted slime, but Arthur still managed to lift the man's head so that the traitorous fool could look him in the eye. Not that Morrissey was capable of looking at anything, by this point. His eyes were swollen almost shut; only a watery gleam of unfocused pupil was visible through each puffed-up slit.

"You're an art-lover," Arthur said, gently. "Aren't you, Morrissey? Whenever you came by the house, you always said you loved our collection. Kline this, De Kooning that. Hell, you liked art so much, Father even asked you if you painted, yourself. You said you couldn't. But you _lied_, didn't you?"

Morrissey didn't say anything. His wheezing breath was Arthur's only answer.

"You lied," Arthur continued. "Because, look!" He wrenched Morrissey's head _down_ - so that the bastard could only stare at the floor, patterned in oddly synchronous spatters of blood and piss and sweat. "You're practically a fucking Pollock!"

When Arthur lifted his baton and struck again, it was against Morrissey's already-bruised chest; there was an almost sub-sonic _crunch_ beneath the surface sound of the impact, and Arthur wondered how many ribs he'd broken. Morrissey swung helplessly, unable to even scream; he merely twitched and groaned, and his slack mouth dripped yet another splotch of blood-pink saliva onto the tiles.

"Award-winning work, here, Morrissey. I think I'll add it to my collection. _Portrait of Judas_. Yes, that's what I'll call it. A suitable name, don't you think?"

He was about to draw back for another strike, when he heard a knock against the gym's door.

"What is it?" He didn't bother turning around; he kept his eyes on Morrissey, who looked barely on the edge of consciousness. Perhaps it was time for a break. Arthur hadn't had lunch, yet; Morrissey could wait.

"A representative of the Bouras family, sir. He has an appointment with you. Shall I escort him to the tea room?"

"No. Send him in." It wouldn't hurt to let the Bouras clan see how Arthur ran things, around here; not many a mafia prince bothered to get his hands dirty, but Arthur took a certain feral joy in doing just that. One couldn't expect one's dirt to yield a harvest, after all, unless one tilled it oneself.

The door hissed open, and Stephanopoulos, second-in-command of the Bouras family, walked in. Arthur raised an eyebrow; Stephanopoulos had only one bodyguard with him, and even that guard was of small stature, shadowed by a hooded cloak.

"Hiring Benedictine monks, now, are you?" Arthur couldn't hold back his amusement - and Stephanopoulos, far from taking insult, grinned back. "I knew you were a religious man, Stephan, but this is ridiculous."

"A man needs to confess his sins, Areté. Or, if that fails, hire someone else to commit them for him." His eyes flickered to where Morrissey hung, naked and suspended from the hook on the gym's ceiling that was normally reserved for punching bags. _Non-human_ punching bags. "But I see that you prefer doing things personally, as always."

"Nothing says sincerity like a personal touch, Stephan. Doesn't your wine taste sweeter when one of your girls feeds it to you? By mouth?"

Stephanopoulos's grin widened; his fat, weathered face creased like an over-ripe fruit. "You mean, _you_ find it sweeter when they feed it to you. You keep charming away my girls, Areté, and I might have to seduce some of yours."

"Go ahead and try." Arthur smirked, heading for the weights bench farthest from Morrissey and his piss-sharp agony-stink. He sat down, and bade Stephan sit on the bench opposite him. "But you know the women like me better, Stephan. They always have."

"Pah! British men cannot match the Greeks for passion."

"For _perversity_, you mean."

Stephanopoulos blinked, then nodded. "True," he agreed, meditatively.

"So, tell me." Arthur laid his baton aside on the bench, and used the folded towel draped over the edge to wipe away his sweat. A bit of red ended up on the towel, too; Morrissey's blood, no doubt. "Why're you interrupting my work-out?"

"Do you always 'work out' by interrogating snitches?" Now it was Stephanopulous's turn to sound amused.

"If the occasion calls for it," Arthur said, grimly. Damn it, it still pissed him _off_ that Morrissey, one of Father's most trusted lieutenants and even a bloke that Arthur had sort of liked, had turned out to be a snitch. Such a fucking _waste_. "And don't answer my questions with questions, Stephan. I haven't the patience for that."

"Not after a morning of beating answers out of someone, no. I quite understand." Stephanopoulos gestured behind him, to the hooded bodyguard, who stepped forward. "I bring you a gift, Areté."

Arthur had always found it ironic that the Greek mafia had chosen _that_ as his nickname; true, he'd been the facilitator of the Pendragon truce with Bouras, but he didn't think of himself as a paragon of virtue, except perhaps the virtue of the streets. "Father always told me to beware of Greeks bearing gifts. And I don't need a confessor, Stephan."

"Ah," said Stephanopoulos, "he's neither a confessor nor a Trojan Horse, despite appearances. He's a very useful man. And since you've just lost an operative - " another glance at Morrissey " - I thought to compensate you for it."

"It isn't your compensation to make," Arthur said, stiffly. "The Pendragons are perfectly capable of finding their own replacements."

"I know, I know," Stephanopoulos soothed. "Well, let's just say that it isn't _exactly_ a gift."

"Really." Arthur threw the towel aside and retrieved his bottle from beneath the bench; he twisted the cap open, swallowed a gulp of fizzy energy drink, and wiped his mouth. "This non-gift couldn't be part of a bribe to secure the Spanish route, could it?"

"Oh, Areté." Stephanopoulos clapped one plump, bejeweled hand over his chest. "You are as astute as always."

"Save the flattery for your girls, Stephan. What do you want from us?"

"The Pendragons," Stephanopoulos said, his genial eyes suddenly sharpening, "hold exclusive rights over the Spanish route. Whores, crack, greenbacks - it all flows through that route. It is, after all, the Silk Route of Europe, as far as drug trafficking is concerned. We'd just like a share of that traffic."

"And what, you think that offering one silk_worm_," Arthur jerked his chin at the hooded man, "will convince us to share the entire Silk Route? Don't be preposterous, Stephan."

"But this isn't a worm, Areté." Stephanopoulos's voice quietened, and that alone drew Arthur's attention. "It's a snake. A snake capable of rendering all your enemies quite dead. And in a way that no one will even _notice_."

Arthur froze. Stephanopoulos couldn't mean - _surely_ he couldn't -

"You do not believe me, I see."

"It's impossible." Arthur set his bottle down; resisted the urge to wipe his mouth again. "Where could you have found one? The government's killed them all."

"Not all," Stephanopoulos said, smugly. "This one's a rare find. A real ghost. There's only one other, the child the Russians have - "

"The boy called 'Mordred'," Arthur interrupted. "The telepath. Yes, I know."

"But this one's the only teek left alive in Europe. His name is Merlin. And he's yours, Areté. For a price."

A - a _telekinetic_? Those were even rarer than telepaths - or had been rarer, while psi-users had still been allowed to live in Britain, before the Great Culling twenty years ago. But there was nothing to confirm what Stephanopoulos was saying - yet - and it wouldn't do to appear too eager. "Am I to understand," Arthur said, slowly, "that you brought such a dangerous creature into my home? That violates the terms of our truce, Stephan. I could have your Boss burn you for that."

"You can't burn fire, Areté." Stephanopoulos's lips curled. "And this _is_ a request from the Boss. If you like his offer, you're welcome to talk it over with him. I'm just the front-man."

"I don't see an offer," Arthur said, looking at the hooded figure. "All I see is a fucking cloak."

"Hm. Good point." Stephanoupolos snapped his fingers. "Off with the cloak, boy. Let him see you."

What happened next was... one of the few things that Arthur had ever been genuinely intimidated by. The man in the cloak didn't move a muscle; he didn't even shrug the cloak off his shoulders. Instead, the cloak's fastening _opened itself_ - a deliberately slow uncurling, slow enough it to be visible - and the cloak simply _lifted away_, taking the hood with it.

Arthur's heart pounded once - loudly - like a gong. "Bloody hell," he rasped, despite himself. "He's a real fucking ghost." Arthur's hand twitched, and he almost reached for his baton - before he remembered that this was just a demonstration, and that he couldn't let anyone from Bouras see him on edge.

Stephanopoulos chuckled. "He is, isn't he? Take a good look. He's probably the only one you'll ever get to see."

_See_. Yeah, he was seeing, all right. Merlin. The teek.

The man beneath the cloak was nothing like Arthur had expected; he'd expected someone significantly younger or older, for some reason, but this bloke was still about Arthur's age. His face was narrow and sharp, and his ears strangely pointed, and though his eyes were lowered deferentially, there was still a tight, vibrating _tension_ in the air around him, as though he were a knot of power, pulsating silently. It was - it was almost as terrifying as it was _thrilling_, and it was - god, all that _power_, everything Arthur had ever wanted, everything he _could_ ever want -

"Look at me," said Arthur.

The teek - Merlin - looked up.

And for a moment, Arthur thought he was looking into two pits of fire - molten-gold and hot - but then the fire cooled, and he was left looking at a very human face, at a pair of very human, very ordinary eyes.

Arthur didn't look away from them, but tilted his head towards Stephanopoulos as he asked the obvious question. "What stops him from destroying us all and escaping?"

The eyes flared golden, once again.

Arthur caught his breath.

"Why don't we let him answer that?" Stephanopoulos gestured to Merlin. "Go on, boy. Tell him why you won't." Stephanopoulos sounded almost_humorous_, as though the fact that he had in his employ a live _bomb_ was a mere jest.

"Destiny," said Merlin, and his voice was quiet, almost indistinguishable from the silence that surrounded him, like a cloak. It was a young voice; it was not the voice of a monster or a freak, for all that the man _was_ was a monster, capable of reducing the very building they stood in to rubble. At a whim. "I am bound to you by destiny."

It - it sounded so _insane_ that all Arthur could do was stare, for a moment. "What, to me? Specifically?"

"To you," said Merlin, and something that might have been a smile flashed across his face. "Specifically."

"He's a little off in the head, this one," said Stephanopoulos, indulgently. "But he means it. Can you believe he came to Bouras, first? We didn't even have to hunt for him. Just showed up, offered his services, and said that he'd serve us only until we could give him to _you_. Which, well, is what's happened, hasn't it? We hadn't wanted to give him up, but then the matter of the Spanish route came up, and, well." Stephanopoulos shrugged. "Fair trade."

"I don't trust people that simply _offer_ their services. Stinks of undercover shite."

"You think he's working for the government?" Stephanopoulos laughed. "_Him_? They'd as soon let him teach kids at a primary school. No teek escapes alive, and you know it. Where else is he supposed to work, if not for us?"

Arthur snorted. "Does he imagine we'll keep him safe?"

"No," said Merlin, suddenly, and Arthur stiffened. "I will keep _you_ safe."

And… Arthur was staring, again. He was _staring_, because - either this bloke was taking the piss, in which case he'd have to be _disciplined_, or he was dead serious, in which case he probably needed therapy. A lot of it.

"Told you he was off in the head," said Stephanopoulos. "But he's loyal, and very, very effective."

"If he's that loyal," said Arthur, "then he's still a Bouras asset. He could be a mole."

"Sent to spy on _you_, Areté? Really?"

"I don't like accepting gifts this generous."

"From Greeks, especially?" Stephanopoulos grinned. "So you're telling me that you would be comfortable letting a weapon as deadly as this one walk out of here, and out of your employ, back into the arms of a competing group?"

It wouldn't do to narrow his eyes; both he and Stephanopoulos had known what the score would be the moment the teek was proved to be genuine, and it was high time their little game of words came to an end. Arthur jerked his head towards the teek. "You," he said. "Merlin. You're mine, now."

The man _shivered_, his eyes glowing, his mouth parting in a way that was disconcerting precisely because Arthur was more used to seeing it on women - specifically, women who _wanted_ him. "Yes, sir." Merlin closed his eyes, swallowed, and looked oddly shaken - for a creature as powerful as a teek, anyway. "I am yours."

Arthur tore his gaze away from Merlin - there was clearly something _wrong_ with the man, aside from the fact that he was a monster. "It's settled, Stephanopoulos." He held his hand out to be shaken. "Thank you for the gift."

Stephanopoulos shook it, a smug look making his features seem even wider - and oilier - than usual. "Oh, no need to thank us, Areté. Merely allow us to share your route."

"Done." Father would need an update, but it wasn't like he would disagree with this decision - not with what they'd gained.

Stephanopoulos's eyes flicked to Merlin, and there was, for a brief instant, something in them that looked very much like pity - or regret. "Done."

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><p><strong>to be continued in a sequel.<strong>  
>(Eventually.)<br>Please review!

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><p><strong>Dictionary of Terms.<strong>

_Borgata_. An organized branch of the mafia; a mafia family.

_Areté_. In its basic sense, means excellence of any kind. In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one's full potential. Sometimes translated as "virtue," the word actually means something closer to "being the best you can be," or "reaching your highest human potential." Areté in ancient Greek culture was courage and strength in the face of adversity and it was to what all people aspired. (From Wikipedia.)

_Ghost_. A psi-user that has somehow survived the Great Culling, and lives 'under the radar' of the government, with no real identity or name. Hence the term, 'ghost'. Ghosts are extremely rare, and usually operate in the underworld, as they know that they will be killed if the government catches them.

_Teek_. Telekinetic.

_Teep_. Telepath.


End file.
